The invention generally relates to method and apparatus for supporting a computer-based product.
Traditional computer-based products incur failures due to such events as parts failing; hardware and/or software being misconfigured; the hardware and/or software being complex; and the unpredicted behavior or use of the products in unplanned ways. These failures typically result in incidents, which are traditionally handled by call centers, customer engineers and parts replacement organizations. The traditional approaches for handling incidents have become significantly costly and complex, as information technology products are becoming increasingly complex and are ubiquitously being used in modern lives. Moreover, the incidents may be reported in an inconsistent way, which results in “noisy” data about the incidents being generated by the products; a lack of organized knowledge about incidents for the human operators at the call centers; and in general, the inability to plan and execute support for the products in a cost-effective manner.